Following

This is not a process of grand arcs,

though grand arcs inform it,

this is the way light falls

on every mote, on every crumble

of the soil, the way it sifts

between the needles,

falls to earth in chinks among the shadows

I cannot accomplish it

in one great sweep —

I follow it along the moments,

let the light seep

into every patch of thought it can redeem,

understand it now and now and now

ever new again along my path.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 28, 2019

Inkling

It may look like death

when someone breaks through the skin

of the world, of the dream —

they may seem to fall out of it

and others may mourn

It’s only when you look closely

at the hole they made,

when, for a moment,

you see the light streaming in,

you might get the inkling

there’s something beyond this shell,

you might start trying

to learn what it is.

©Wendy Mulhern

October 14, 2019

Life Power

In the dream, the little girl

pulled the shining life jewels

right out of the air,

and when others scrambled for them,

reaching out in desperation

for the ones that pulsed with power,

she seemed surprised. “It’s right here,”

she said. She opened up her hand

and pulled out more

On waking, and in latter days,

I find that what she said is true —

It’s right here — infinity of life power

waiting to be pulled out from the air,

waiting to be lived.

©Wendy Mulhern

July 18, 2019

Life Size

I’d come to think of my life as small —

small circles, small desire,

small prospects, small needs,

and it felt truer, certainly, than

how I used to wave my hand, 

and utter grand plans,

and watch, with something less than confidence,

for some great wave to come along

and bear me up to what I felt

was a deserving height

I recognize that humbleness

is both the starting point

and the essential stance

for riding on the arc of being.

I notice, too, that service to infinity

does not make me small

And so, though I don’t know

what it is for, or how it will work out,

I now am willing

to enlarge my tent.

©Wendy Mulhern

June 9, 2019

It’s Universal

You may be rising

but the tide is, too —

we don’t go anywhere alone

Landmarks fall away,

measurements, too —

we can’t compare,

so much is new,

so much is felt in the attention

to these moments, all subsuming

as they are

Try to notice one

in the fleeting space of a thought,

try to hold it through the scrim

of day to day

If you miss this one,

the rhythm will come round again,

the place to grasp, in here and now,

infinity.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 29, 2019

A large place

You come into this place

where all is forgiven —

this place too big for indignation,

too big for shame,

too big for being right,

too big for having thought

all of those small thoughts

that kept things in their place

and called some things impossible

and other things unfortunate,

that called some people good

and others bad

This place is too big for any of that.

So you look, clear-eyed and amazed,

surprised at what you never knew before

but certainly are sure of now.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 14, 2019

Winter Water

Could be a place you call home,

could be a place you call memory,

could be a mirror,

could be the path of a stone

sinking deep in winter water

All these clouds have gathered

to view themselves,

to feel their loft,

to lend the pond another layer

of depth and luminosity

We will go deep, too,

because we love to,

and we will float high

because we, too,

include the sky.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 3, 2019

Uncontained

Though I often see myself as a container,

I am not a container, nor yet

an essence contained

I try to see myself

as the response to a wish,

an answer to a summons,

that which is awakened when the dream ends

I try to feel how my being

rises to the touch of the moment,

thrilled consequence of Life’s desire to be

Thus uncontained, my presence serves the infinite,

collecting nothing but not empty —

free.

©Wendy Mulhern

December 16, 2018

Incomparable

The infinite will not compare you

to anyone. The infinite has room

to see you infinite, has room for everyone

to be one of a kind,

in their perfectly appointed place

You in particular

(not to stint the same for every entity)

celebrated in the amazing way

you are what is needed,

(a role that opens out for each of us,

each of us holy,

each of us resplendent where we are.)

©Wendy Mulhern

November 18, 2018

Measure

No need for agony —

it doesn’t matter

how many times you failed —

no need for bludgeoning yourself

with all those painful awkward memories

You can leave them in a pile.

You don’t have to take them with you,

and, in fact, you can’t.

You will not be judged by them —

they never have been you

No one will weigh you,

for your measure is infinity

and your unfoldment

beyond all time.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 2, 2018

Clear

Let me lay down the confusion

that has beset my years,

let me recognize

our lives were never about this

We are not tokens, moved along a board,

we are not pawns nor rooks nor queens

nor even players.

The realm we move in

has always been the infinite —

not mind within the body

but body in the mind —

our consciousness reveals

the size of what we are

It may be hard

to come to this life knowing,

and have the knowing steadily displaced.

We won’t be always fooled,

we will shine clear,

and what we are will surface in our days.

©Wendy Mulhern

September 25, 2018

Visions

The man said he saw himself as paint

spread out over the landscape,

he saw himself as if dissolved

but didn’t care

I saw myself as the hills themselves,

and the trees on them, thrusting into sky,

I saw myself as flight itself, as song glide,

comprising all the realm my consciousness could span

I saw myself known, in the sharing of space

with others as vast and as free,

I saw myself knowing them

sweetly and intimately

When we come back with these visions,

what shall we do? How shall we live

in these things that we know to be true?

— Live in the vision, live from the vision,

bring it more clearly in view.

©Wendy Mulhern

September 16, 2018

Into the Allness

Well, peace was one thing that I asked for,

and any one of those infinities would do —

peace, joy, belovedness,

unfolding in a holy purpose —

any of those, glimpsed here, and really grasped

delivers those who hold it to the Allness

But I confess, I didn’t get there that way.

The door I went through was grief, was storm,

and it wasn’t me holding on to anything,

it was something so much vaster holding me

So I was delivered

into the Allness

where all those infinities are fully given,

where they comprise the fiber of our being

with which Love weaves us

day by day by day.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 25, 2018

One Life

One life is enough —

its redemption encompasses

all experience, the heights and depths

of all that can be known

One life is enough —

no life is wasted,

none insignificant

Every life is worth

breaking the bubble

in which it has been held,

releasing it to free fall

till it can open its wings

to navigate infinity.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 15, 2018

Games with sounds and space

You peer with interest

through the interstices

to find, somehow, the ultimate escape

where everything transcends 

what it was thought to be —

the thing becomes the space between

as focus shifts, the space becomes the thing

Come inward, then, come through

to where, on tiny scale, space opens out —

infinitesimal, the infinite within

deftly reflects the universe without

This is a thing you clearly want,

less certain is your need —

you will try to take it home —

Who knows? You may succeed.

©Wendy Mulhern

June 29, 2018

Life Flow

In all the things we think we know,

so many things we don’t —

a city in a frond of fern, a universe,

the vast unfolding vibrance 

in the corridors between the cells,

all the exuberance that life can send

coursing through those unseen channels

In these two turkey hens

ambling among the ferns,

nonchalantly snapping up the bugs,

chirping conversationally as they step —

perhaps two nebulae

grandly moving through the depths of space

They all — we all — are orchestrated

in the unceasing law of Life’s eternal joy,

our movement so much deeper than will or whim,

held by its breathing through us all.

©Wendy Mulhern

June 16, 2018

Changes

The only place we’ve ever lived

is in the place where we can never die.

This isn’t what it looks like,

these days, these goals —

whatever I have thought of them before —

these changes . . . 

Now I’ll keep paying attention

to what lights us up

deep down at the source,

what makes us live and move

before we even enter all the surface fray

This isn’t what it looks like

but it is something. Indeed,

it overrides whatever I had thought —

these changes, this which never changes.

This which I may find to be enough.

©Wendy Mulhern

June 1, 2018

Unconditional

I sense that I have barely comprehended

the size of unconditional

and what it means

to be companioned in that vastness,

comforted at every step

And how it is that there’s no far away

in everpresence, no departure

from here. Space without distance,

development with no constraint of time,

nothing locked away by past or future,

everything at hand in earth and heaven.

©Wendy Mulhern

May 31, 2018

The Light Within

There is no way

(boxes within boxes,

sea bottom, barnacles)

you can close off

the deep bright light within you

(white brilliance, color sparkles)

no way you can keep it

from burning through all the barriers,

no way they can stop it

from claiming its source and home

in the infinite light it is one with,

the ever luminescent truth.

©Wendy Mulhern

March 10, 2018

Observations

In the moment of unweighting,

in the moment of release from all the cogs,

in the moment of perceiving

what puts us here,

some observations bear a mention:

The flash of infinity 

is like light

The rush of freedom

is exhilaration bordering on terror

A racing moment has more ticks

than I can count

Everything is possible,

no protocols have to be followed

In the moment of noticing

how this perception changes everything,

there is power. There is power

and there is peace.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 31, 2018